To See The Stars
by rosethatgrewfromconrete
Summary: Only in the darkness can you see the stars... they claim timing wasn't perfect- it came too soon- and they claim that you must let go of the things you love- though how could you love something you never really knew- and a mistake was made...only after experiencing the presence do you feel the absence- for them it was the concept- they'd miss. song-fic Happy Birthday Flipsyde


**To See the Stars**

This is an expanded one-shot (Anonymous) I had done on a song ("Happy Birthday"_- _Flipsyde ) on a prior account (CodyMockingbird).

**I paid for the murder before they determined the sex choosing our life over your life meant your death and you never got the chance to even open your eyes sometimes I wonder as a fetus if you fought for your life…I've got a million excuses to why you died bet people got their own reasons for homicide**

Drowning- I had never experienced the fear that consume you in its abyss as you suffocate, feeling your lungs heave and struggle to breathe in oxygen to vitalize your body, feeling the pressure pull you into its embrace, feeling the burden of the water force you to bend to its strength and will, feeling Death's fingerprints caress you before it takes you into its arms to cradle you.

Inexplicably in this moment, I could assimilate the concept of drowning. I understood. Because for once in my life, I felt that fear that consumes you, that pressure of being weighted down, this unwelcomed embrace, and my heart sunk.

Freely falling from her swirling silver orbs, tears trickled tumultuously down her cheeks.

Without words being exchanged, I knew that she was drowning in reality- the sacrifices she would be forced to make, the dreams that would flutter away in the breeze into mere fantasies of a young, naïve girl, and the burden she'd shoulder.

Traitorous tears escaped and jaggedly rolled down my cheeks.

"I love," she murmured brokenly, unable to finish her whisper as her hands drifted down to her belly.

"Sometimes you have to let go of the things you love," I whisper because I know that deep down that this is the best option now- this baby came too soon and some things are never meant to be.

And we spent all night in hushed whispers and through thick tears just talking- fate in our hands, though it'd probably be more accurate to say that we truly held life in our hands.

* * *

I weave my fingers with hers as she lies down on this table that holds both life and death in the briefest of moments- a table that belongs both in the nursery and in the morgue.

Silently streaming down her cheeks, she obscures her vision with sealed lids and tears that ceaselessly dance down.

I witness as they use these crude tweezers to tear limb from body of this aborted fetus. Helplessly, I idly watch as they execute an innocent.

But I remind myself of everything we discussed in the night we sealed this child's fate, allowing myself to be lulled into disillusionments and lies to obscure the truth of the consequences of my actions. And I tell myself that this child is nothing more than cells, it's not alive.

Echoing in the depths of my mind, I can see a blob of cells that resembles a child, hands held before its face as it screams frightened and terrified in the dark as its limbs are ripped from its body. It helplessly tries to cry out to its mother and father for protection, for assurance, for security. Its cries and screams pierce the silence. And its heart breaks when the silence remains and it realizes its mother and father have abandoned it and even betrayed it to Death.

**Would you've been a little angel or an angel of sin? Tom boy running around hanging with all the guys or a little tough boy with beautiful brown eyes?...I wonder about your skin tone and the shape of your nose and they way you would have laughed and talked fast or slow?**

It's been some time since you were welcomed into this world and then quickly taken from it- I don't prefer to admit that we aborted you and that we created you only to execute you before you ever had the chance to live in this world.

Initially, I felt the guilt when we left that forsaken building- the one that legally executed you- but I reminded myself of all the reasons we had taken this step instead. And I survived without you. I convinced myself that we had done what was best for you and us. And I lived- though looking back it was barely alive.

The hardest day was the day you should have been born- the day you would have been cradled in your mother's arms and I would have been standing there looking down at you, probably shedding a tear because I would have never seen anything as beautiful as you until then- and I cried that day, completely broke down.

They say time heals all wounds, and time helped ease the burden of the pain that had been inflicted- but time couldn't erase scars.

Since the day of your supposed birth, I've thought of you in passing moments, dreamed of what you would have been like- and these differ frequently: sometimes you're the spitting image of your mother or others you have everything of your mother apart from your jade eyes and others you are the perfect blend of either of us. And in most of my dreams, you laugh and smile- though this changes often as well from a deep baritone to a giggling and everything in between and from a wide graceful, brilliant grin to a tilted and crooked smirk. And in other dreams- though I label them nightmares- you cry and weep and you wail, sometimes you scream and plead for help.

Some days, I simply stare off into space and I try to envision you and I give you characteristics and I search for a name that would have fit you. But there are so many to choose from and I wonder what we would have chosen for you- but I don't broach the subject with your mother, she still grieves and mourns over our choices and mistakes, and the several times I have it's brought tears to her eyes and she gets sullen and silent as she imagines you.

One time though your mother confessed to me in the darkest hours of the night that if everything she had sacrificed had been worth the cost. She softly whispered that she wondered if her job and education been worth the price she paid by giving you up as she had. And she wondered if everything she had done as a child: shouldering the weight of the world could have been a price worthy of loosing a child.

And another night she had confessed that a twenty-year-old mother would have struggled her whole life. And she doubted the life she could have given you due to her limitations in education and money. She told me that it had been best that we waited, that we stalled your arrival until we were ready. And she had gently prodded the question of what would have happened to us as a couple if we had welcomed you: she wondered if we would be together years later or if the stress of a baby so young would have torn us apart and broken us despite everything we've been through. She asked me then if we would have sacrificed us for another human being.

But tonight is your fifth birthday, and your mother made a cake with blue icing because she swears you would have loved blue and I smiled because it's the first time I've heard her be able to speak about you without crying. We sit in silence after blowing out your candles, just imagining a small child that resembles both of us in your own ways, sitting here at the head of this table, a large grin gracing your face as you blow out these candles after making a wish.

"Happy birthday," I murmur to you, wherever you are. "Daddy loves you."

And then I wonder what would I have told you tonight, what I would have you gotten you- maybe a bike and taught you to ride it- and I wonder what friends you would have invited from school. I smile softly as I try to picture you giving me a large hug – though I dwarf you- as you excitedly celebrate the gifts you've received from friends and family and all the bliss you're experiencing on your birthday. I would hope that you would have felt loved and completely adored on this day.

**You've got a little brother maybe he's really you maybe you forgave us knowing we was confused maybe every time he smiles it's you proudly knowing that your father's doing the right thing now**

I can't help the contagious laugh as I watch your mother make these silly faces as she feeds your baby brother and then using the spoon to clean up his face when he messily allows some to reject itself from his mouth.

He's got a mop of ebony atop his head that is in constant disarray despite your mother's attempts to tame his unruly locks into some semblance of neat. And he has these swirling jade eyes but he's got your mother 's features from her nose to her lips.

He was a blessing- we hadn't really considered trying for a baby after you're mother was no longer drowning in you but she had said that she wanted a baby soon, not one to replace you or fill in the void we'd created but a baby that she could pour out all the love she held for you and the new baby into- and he was beautiful. And he's only a couple of months old, but I can't help but picture you at this point in life and how you would have interacted with a baby brother.

But in the quiet of the night- when he's asleep and not screaming- I wonder if that maybe he's not a new being and that maybe I've traveled back in time to an alternate universe where you exist and I'm simply taking care of you and watching you grow. Or maybe I wonder if we were given a second chance and you were given back to us again- returned to us. But then I decide that whatever the case may be, I couldn't be happier. I couldn't love something more than my children- though I know technically to the world I only have a son.

I realize that I've been a granted a sun to brighten up my life and that regardless of having been granted one years before, I didn't appreciate the effulgence of it because I hadn't truly seen darkness until after the sun had sunken below the horizon. You can only see the stars in the darkness.

**And from the heavens to the womb to the heavens again, from the ending to the ending, never got to begin, maybe one day we could meet face to face in a place without time and space…**


End file.
